Employee Profile: Ray Walker, Maintenance Engineer

Worked at Louisville Water since 2017

One of Ray Walker’s most memorable days on the job for Louisville Water was a day in October 2018. What was so special about it?

It was the day “when WAM went live,” he said.

WAM (an acronym for Oracle’s Work and Asset Management program) is designed to help organizations maintain equipment and other assets more efficiently. It can predict potential problems and provide information for buy-or-replace decisions.

WAM enhanced several aspects of Louisville Water’s operations. For Walker, the company’s installation of the system “allowed us to start using the new software to manage, improve, and document maintenance activities,” he said.

Overall, Walker has more than four decades of manufacturing and maintenance experience – as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering.

As a WAM Core Team Member when Louisville Water was implementing the software, Walker was responsible for migrating the company’s existing maintenance management system into WAM, which included corrective and preventive maintenance activities to keep the Zorn pump station, Crescent Hill Water Treatment Plant, B.E. Payne Water Treatment Plant, and distribution pumping systems functioning properly.

Overall, the WAM implementation was a significant development in his career, Walker said, because it helped with one of the primary challenges he faces as a maintenance engineer, which is “balancing and scheduling preventive maintenance activities with maintenance resources for over 9,000 assets.” But he added that the implementation also allowed him to delve into one of his favorite parts of his job — “working with maintenance mechanics and staff to improve equipment maintenance.”

“WAM allows us to schedule and document all work for each individual asset,” he said. “Preventive maintenance schedules can be established to maintain efficiency, maximize the up-time, and extend the life expectancy of each asset. Corrective maintenance repairs can be documented and reviewed for improvement. More importantly, calibration of instruments such as turbidimeters can be scheduled and documented to meet state water quality requirements.”

He also pointed out that with WAM, “work activities are sent directly to each maintenance mechanic’s mobile device, eliminating the need to handle paperwork. Work instruction details can be found on each activity, and mechanics complete service histories describing what was done. The Production Maintenance Department has developed a comprehensive maintenance program to improve the performance of the equipment, be more efficient in our work, document the work at an asset level, and measure performance.”

When he’s not working, Walker said he and his wife enjoy spending most of their free time “with our three children and grandchildren.”